'Strike the hammer while the iron is hot': The Black freedom struggle in Rochester, NY, 1940-1970

Strike the Hammer While the Iron is Hot: The Black Freedom Struggle in Rochester, NY, 1940-1970 is a study of the long Civil Rights and Black Power Movements in a northern, urban community. The work first traces the growth and development of the Black community in Rochester between 1940 and 1964, paying special attention to a new black leadership which drew on the traditional Civil Rights strategies of voter registration and protest. Before a Movement with stable organizations and a recognized leadership coalesced, an uprising or race riot erupted in the summer of 1964. Strike the Hammer argues that the riot quickly became Rochester’s watershed moment and served as a fundamental precondition to a Black Freedom Movement in the city. This long community study then follows the various segments of post-riot Rochester as they struggled to organize in response to the crisis. The work further charts the efforts and accomplishments, as well as the conflicts and confrontations that emerged within the Black community and the city’s power structure. By 1970, a newly organized Rochester Black Movement had provided several concrete outlets for Black hopes and aspirations, had reshaped notions of corporate responsibility nationally, and had contributed mightily to a newly emerging campaign for Black Capitalism. Strike the Hammer stands at the intersection of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, builds on an emerging literature that reinserts the urban and Northern Civil Rights movement into the grander narrative of the African American freedom struggle nationally, and then adds to this literature by showing how Rochester, a relatively small Northern city with long ties to black liberation, became a pacesetter, blazing trails in the African American freedom struggle. This text draws on the organizational records of the NAACP, SCLC, and FIGHT; contemporary newspapers, newsletters, and magazines; local, state, and national governmental documents and reports; as well as oral histories.